The Finnish phone maker Nokia, in collaboration with the American mobile operator AT&T, is gearing up for the release of Nokia's flagship phone - Lumia 900 - in the U.S. market. The phone will hit AT&T stores on April 8, two weeks earlier than initially scheduled.

In an interview with CNET, Jeff Bradley, AT&T device head, described Nokia's Lumia 900 as something above anything we've ever done, stressing that it will be bigger even than the launch of the iPhone.

The promotion campaign is expected to last for at least six weeks, during which the Lumia 900 will be the main showpiece in every AT&T store.

Chris Weber, president of Nokia for the North America acknowledged that this strong campaign is designed to help the Finnish company recover the U.S. market share lost over the last several years. Nokia's president refused to say anything about the amount spent on the campaign, but said it was enough to be able to successfully promote a smartphone.

The price of only $100 will make the Lumia 900 the cheapest flagship phone ever offered by the mobile phone operator.

The partnership between Nokia and the giant software maker Microsoft is quite interesting, given that Microsoft's new mobile software is not that popular in the U.S. However, at first sight, AT&T seems to be very confident in the Lumia 900's success in the American market - a market clearly dominated by iPhone and the wave of Android devices. The company told CNET that it is already working with Nokia on a big TV advertising campaign for the Lumia 900, while inside any AT&T stores the phone will be placed in the spotlight with posters promoting it.

Nokia features 4.3-inch ClearBlack AMOLED with a resolution of 800x480 pixels, an 8-megapixel camera, a 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and a range of 7 hours talk time. The smartphone runs Windows Phone Mango, with software services such as Nokia Drive and Nokia Maps.

(reported by Laurentiu Stan, edited by Surojit Chatterjee)

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